Jared Heinrichs

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Netbeans unexpected tag <a> found, expecting one of

You might have seen the “Unexpected tag <a> found, expecting one of <table>, <h4>,<h2>,<pre>,<noscript>” error in Netbeans. This happens when you create an anchor link. There will be a red “!” and light bulb on the line that is in question.

Here’s a screenshot of the error:

Netbeans unexpected tag <a> found, expecting one of 01

The reason why you are getting this error is that you are using XHTML with strict mode enabled. What you might not realize (or have forgotten) is that under strict xhtml markup inline elements must always be wrapped inside block level elements like <table>, <h4>, <h2>, <pre>,  <div>, or <p>

So in order resolve this error  the code should look something like this:

Netbeans unexpected tag <a> found, expecting one of 02

Notice how there is no longer a red “!”? As a side note although Netbeans normally has pretty good code hints I definitely think there is room for improvement. I hope this helps!

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How to give an anchor tag a width and height

I’ve seen this happen a few times by junior web designers. They create a bunch of anchor tags and using CSS they give it a background color, width and height. Then they go refresh their web browser and voila. Only the background color shows.

The width and height doesn’t seem to take. What they were wanting to get is to look something like this:

image

Here’s  an example with code of what I am talking about:

HTML Code

image

CSS Code

image

Result

image

So why does this happen? This happens because anchor tags are not block level HTML elements but rather inline elements. So what is the difference between the two? Here is the definition of the two items:

Inline Element definition:

  • Inline elements typically may only contain text and other inline elements. When rendered visually, inline elements do not usually begin on a new line. I found a good link that lists all of HTML inline elements.

Block Element:

  • Block-level elements typically contain inline elements and other block-level elements. When rendered visually, block-level elements usually begin on a new line. I found a good link that lists all of the HTML Block Elements.

So how would we get the anchor tags to show their widths and heights? Well we only would have to add one line of CSS code in the /* Buttons */ section. This is what the CSS would look like after we were done with it.

CSS Code

image

After you have done this the buttons would now show their height and width. They would also be stacked on top of each other since the definition of a block element is to begin on a new line. If you didn’t want the buttons to be on new lines you could always float them to the left and put a padding on them.

I hope that helps explains thing a bit

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How to Wipe Free Disk Space using cipher

It’s no secret (or at least, it shouldn’t be) that when you delete files or folders in Windows, they’re not actually erased. The space they took up is simply marked as “available for use,” which allows the files to be recoverable (with the right software) until they’re overwritten with new data.

There is a utility built-into Windows (even XP Pro and Vista) that will overwrite all the free space on a hard drive, insuring any files you’ve deleted stay dead. Launch a command prompt and type cipher /w:X where X is the letter of the drive or partition you want to wipe. Be patient the process can take a long time if you have a lot of free space.

Try searching this site!